Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Fall floral nail art!

Hi everybunny! I missed you guys yesterday, sorry I didn't post anything - I was camping all weekend and camping and nail painting just don't mix haha! But I'm BACK today with some delicate fall floral nails to show you guys.

I have a whole lightbox on Shutterstock full of nail inspo photos (I've mentioned that before) and last week I was going through it and came across this image. I really wanted to do it and I even got all the colors out and ready but once I got my base coat on I decided it'd be too time-consuming. I do this a lot because I'm lazy and awful. So instead I painted those vine nails I showed y'all last Thursday. I thought the vines would be faster/easier but these actually took me less time than those did! SERVES ME RIGHT.

The base color for these is China Glaze Kalahari Kiss, which is definitely my favorite neutral right now. It's less skin-toned and more khaki which I think makes it a great neutral for fall. Although my weird skin makes it look pretty skin toned. Seriously WHAT IS WRONG WITH MY SKIN.

The orange is China Glaze Desert Sun, the green is Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Green with Envy, the brown is OPI Wooden Shoe Like to Know, and the turquoise is China Glaze For Audrey. I didn't have a pinkish red that was washed-out looking enough to satisfy me for matching it to the original inspiration image, so to make that color I mixed China Glaze Heli-yum with some Kalahari Kiss. I would like to note that this is the second time I've used KK as a mix-in and it's the ONLY polish I've ever done that with. No idea why.

I painted these using a few different tools. Of course for most of the line work I used my mid-length striper brush. For most of the dots I used small dotting tools, but I also made a couple of them with the end of my brush (because why get out a different tool when you can be lazy and just keep using the same one?). For the really fine lines (like the ones on the paisley-looking things on my pointer finger) I busted out my cut-down long striping brush, which is very skinny but surprisingly easy to work with.

I started on the thumb nail with Desert Sun and sort of just went along on each nail with one color at a time, pulling different pieces from the image for each nail. I really like how all the nails are cohesive and use the same color palette but they don't all look the same. This is probably my favorite way to do floral patterns! I also love using an image for inspiration because it takes all the work (and TEARS) out of trying to pick colors.

What do y'all think of these nails? I wasn't sure at first if I liked them but once I topcoated and looked at them for a while I fell in love with them. I'm also really proud of the fact that I'm getting a lot better at super delicate line work with a brush. No nail art pens for this girl!!!

I am soo into florals lately so you'll probably be seeing a lot of those from me in the near future. Conversely, I will be tired of them as soon as I take this mani off and go immediately back to geometric prints. Or maybe I'll go CRAZY and combine the two!!! LOOK OUT GUYS, YOU NEVER KNOW WHAT I MIGHT DO NEXT.

thank you!! i pretty much only use a tiny brush for nail art so i've had a lot of practice, it's taken me a long long time to get to where i'm mostly satisfied but i still have a lot of room for improvement :)

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